Video recording of IPhone screen of total game play - iphone

I want to record screen video recording during application running and unfortunately apple didn't provide any scratch code on it.
The scenario is there a 'RECORD' button and a 'STOP' button. when I touch 'RECORD', I need to take a video of the entire gameplay (Screen Video) and stop recording when I touch 'STOP'.
Is there any other method besides the screenshot method to do this?
For example - Talking Tom, Angry birds, etc.

Instead of taking a video, you could record the user interactions and replay them. If you use a PRNG for random events, you should also make sure to seed it with the same value while replaying a game.
Screen capture in iOS has a few problems, one of which being performance, and the other being the fact that some animations are not captured because they happen at some low level, out of sight for normal screen capturing methods.
This, of course, will only replay the game on screen.

if we talk about angry birds, that has been developed in COCOS2D and if your game is also developed in cocos2d, you are lucky..!! Maybe if you dig-in you could find a way to use it with UIKit as well...who knows..!!
there is a cocos2d 3rd party utility named -Kamcord that can be used for recording gameplay.
kamcord.com
COCOS2D Kamcord archive link

We provide an SDK called "Everyplay" that allows you to do exactly what you're looking for. It's free to use, and is lightweight.
We provide out-of-the-box integrations for Unity3D, cocos2d (1.x, 2.x), cocos2d-x, and you can of course integrate to a custom OpenGL-based game engine.
The documentation is available at https://developers.everyplay.com/doc
The documentation contains an example app key to use when developing, but you can of course sign up for your own client key at https://developers.everyplay.com/

Related

Screen record in unity3d

How to do screen record in unity?
I want to record my screen(gameplay) during my running game.
That should be play/stop , replay , save that recording on locally from device, open/load from my device (which is already we recorded).
In my game one camera which can capture native camera, and one 3d model.
I wish to record that both and use my functionality whenever i want.
Thank you in advance.
This is hard to implement, but not impossible. Because every frame or interval you need to capture screen shot of your camera view and store it in the list. You need good, (Smaller interval but not much. Because when it becomes smaller, needs more memory) interval value. If your interval is big raplay can be seen laggy.
While you play game your ram becomes full and os will terminate the app. So you need to fully cover memory optimization. Another solution is assets in Unity Asset store.
EZ Replay Manager can be used. (Keep in mind: I haven't tried it yet.)
Free
Pro
Check out this open-source project: https://github.com/getsocial-im/getsocial-capture.
By default our project records Main Camera's rendered content. C# examples are in the repo.
You can record in 2 modes:
Continuous mode - capture last X frames.
Manual mode - capture frames on your own when needed. For example, record a timelapse of the level.
Once the recording is done, you can generate GIF, get raw bytes and do whatever you want. E.g. let your users share that GIF with friends.
Here's the recording of a game session from the test app. The recorded GIF shows up in the end:
Disclaimer: I worked at GetSocial at the time of writing.
well i know a guy who post a similar project on github. link :- https://github.com/thanh-nguyen-kim/Unity_Android_Screen_Recorder
but there is a limitation and that is this code is only works on android devices(android means only android not even on ios).
but this is very powerful recorder and it is capture whatever appear on screen(so basically it is a screen recorder made with unity) and also it will capture your microphone output.give it a try.
and if you find any other solution then please also tell me. because it will very helpful for me.because i want to record video with in-game audio and also save it into gallery
Unity now has a screen recording tool builtin. It's called Recorder and doesn't require any coding.
In Unity, go to the Window menu, then click on Package Manager
By default, Packages might be set to "In Project". Select "Unity
Registry" instead
Type "Recorder" in the search box
Select the Recorder and click Install in the lower right corner of the window
That's about all you need to get everything set up and hopefully the
options make sense. The main thing to be aware of that setting
"Recording Mode" to "Single" will take a single screenshot (with
F10)
NOTE: This is a copy of my answer from a Unity screenshots question

Reduced quality OpenGL ES screenshots (iPhone)

I'm currently using this method from Apple to take screenshots of my OpenGL ES iPhone game. The screenshots look great. However taking a screenshot causes a small stutter in the game play (which otherwise runs smoothly at 60 fps). How can I modify the method from Apple to take lower quality screenshots (hence eliminating the stutter caused by taking the screenshot)?
Edit #1: the end goal is to create a video of the game play using AVAssetWriter. Perhaps there's a more efficient way to generate the CVPixelBuffers referenced in this SO post.
What is the purpose of the recording?
If you want to replay a sequence on the device you can look into saving the object positions etc instead and redraw the sequence in 3D. This also makes it possible to replay sequences from other view positions.
If you want to show the game play on i.e. youtube or other you can look into recording the game play with another device/camera or record some game play running in the simulator using some screen capture software as ScreenFlow.
The Apple method uses glReadPixels() which just pulls all the data across from the display buffer, and probably triggers sync barriers, etc, between GPU and CPU. You can't make that part faster or lower resolution.
Are you doing this to create a one-off video? Or are you wanting the user to be able to trigger this behavior in the production code? If the former, you could do all sorts of trickery to speed it up-- render to a smaller size for everything, don't present at all and just capture frames based on a recording of the input data running into the game, or other such tricks, or going even further run that whole simulation at half speed to get all the frames.
I'm less helpful if you need an actual in-game function for this. Perhaps someone else will be.
If all else fails.
Get one of these
http://store.apple.com/us/product/MC748ZM/A
And then convert that composite video to digital through some sort of external device.
I've done this when I converted vhs movies to dvd a long time ago.

Is it a good idea to use an video as splash screen in my iphone app?

I'm about to finish an app and now I wanted to add an animated splash screen with my company logo after the app finishes loading and launching. I can just use an animation with openGL for this, but I was wondering if it would be better to use a video..it's easier for me and the artist because he will only provide with an small video which i would reproduce after my app finish launching..less work.
I wonder if it's a good idea to do so...can I reproduce a small short video with the logo of my company or should i stick to making an animation ?
Also, reproducing video is memory intensive ?, because I'm loading some texture after my app finishes launching, and im wrried about that.
If i end up reproducing an small video, can i make it non interactive ? ( no pause, play stop, ect) so it looks like just as another animation to the eyes of the user ?
My other preocupation is quality...the quality of the video will look dramatically different to my animations in openGL ?
Thanks !
I can't tell you about the technical stuff, but what I can tell you is: don't use a splash screen. Directly from the Human Interface Guidelines:
Supply a launch image to improve user experience; avoid using it as an opportunity to provide:
• An “application entry experience,” such as a splash screen
...
Because users are likely to switch among applications frequently, you should make every effort to cut launch time to a minimum, and you should design a launch image that downplays the experience rather than drawing attention to it.
The HIG guidelines are intended (as far as I can tell) for Apps on the iPhone.
This is different from Games on the iPhone.
If your app provides some utility to the user, I agree completely with #Costique, #fabian789, and the HIG. The app should start instantly, with minimal loading and other distracting crap.
For a game, however, intros and the like are not only expected, but can also lead to a better user experience. My recommendation is to use a UIView Animation for only a small portion of the screen (the logo only). See Angry Birds as an example - their "animation" starts the same time the user's options do, so your animation (while quite pretty) doesn't block the user from using your app.
Disclaimer: the following is an entirely subjective humble user opinion. Please, don't take it to heart.
I hate video splash screens on my iPhone/iPad, however beautiful and stylish. What I like is apps which launch instantaneously. On iOS 4 chances are, I will see the startup animation once a month when the OS decides to terminate your app when the device is low on memory. So, now I tap the app icon and see the animation, now I tap it and don't (because it's already launched). It's inconsistent, out of your (and my) control, and ultimately makes little sense.
From both quality and aesthetics points of view, I think GL animation would better fit (hopefully) intense addictive action which follows. I'm not sure, however, that you will be able to load any resources in the background, while the animation plays, without making the animation stutter.

Playing iPhone movies through TV out

Is there any way to emulate the Videos app such that we still maintain controls on the device (iPad/iPhone), but sends the video out through the cables to the TV? I looked into screen mirroring, but it's way too slow for videos, and regardless, the UIGetScreenImage() used by screen mirroring is no longer allowed by Apple.
The Videos app seems to have exactly what I need, but I don't see anything simple to make that happen.
Update (10/15/10): So apparently movies played through UIWebView have TV-Out support, while MPMoviePlayerController movies don't.
http://rebelalfons.posterous.com/iphone-os-support-for-tv-out
However, there is a caveat: this does not work on older devices updated to the most recent iOS. That is, iPod touches, iPhone 3G & 3GS don't work, while iPhone 4 and iPads do. Hoping there's some more stuff that we can use to fill in the gaps in compability, since I know its possible. Apps like AirVideo and StreamToMe currently support this functionality.
I am not sure if there is an official way to do this. But as for your examples, AirVideo uses method Swizzling (check out: http://www.cocoadev.com/index.pl?MethodSwizzling) to override checks in Movie Player, and acting like Videos app
I guess some with some reverse engineering on SDK, you can find where the checks are made, and swizzle that method, with your custom one.
In 3.2 and later (postdating the site you link to), UIScreen has a class method, 'screens' that'll return an array of one object — the main screen — if no external display is available, or two screens — the main screen and the external screen — if a TV lead is connected. The task should be as simple as positioning the views you want to appear on the external screen within its frame and the controls you want on the device within the other.
Have you tried that?
Edited for one additional comment: also as of 3.2, it is explicitly permissible to create an MPMovieController and then grab the view from it to treat as a normal UIView rather than doing a full 'present'. So that's how you'd get a movie view that you can position as you wish.

iPhone Smooth Transition from One Video To Another

I have to figure out the best way to transition from one video to the next
BASIC IDEA: An example would be that there is a video of a person walking.....the user taps the video and a seamless transition occurs to a video of a person running (over simplified example)
My first thought was to create 2 movie players and use transitions between the 2 view elements. But movie-player doesn't support that.
stopping the current video, loading new content, and then starting it is a solution but not very elegant. We are making a interactive sales tool for our reps and we want this to look as professional as possible.
CURRENT THOUGHT: If there was some sample code for AVPlayer, it would seem I could use AVVideoComposition to switch between videos? But details on how that might happen don't seem to be currently available.
POSSIBLE CLUE: I figured this would be easy as I bought an app called Live Cams HD that shows 16 different video feeds at once.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Steve, the short answer is that you are not going to be able to get the kind of results you want using AVPlayer. The h.264 video logic included in iOS is really great at playing video and video/audio together, but it really sucks at starting/stopping and switching from one clip to another. The reason is that there is a lot of buffering that needs to happen to load up and start playing a h.264 video in hardware. Basically, you need to roll your own code that sets UIImage/CGImageRef for your views in a way that makes it easy to switch from one clip to another by simply switching from one array of UIImage objects to another. Of course, that is easy to say yet not so easy to implement.
What I would suggest is that you evaluate existing code that already implements this logic instead of rolling your own. For example, have a look at this StreetFighter demo app. It shows how a very simple game like iPhone UI can be constructed using a series of clips that show a character doing a kick, a punch, or throwing a fireball. The results looks like this:
I also wrote up a blog post about seamless-video-looping-on-ios. You can of course roll your own code to do all this, but I would suggest reading more about my library at the linked website as it will save you a lot of time.
After the first video has played every frame except the last one, you quickly swap to a view with an image of the last frame (basically the last frame) and then you transition into a view with the an image of the first frame of the next video and start up that one.
Or you could create a animation with all your frames (programming your videos), that will make it customizable, but the quality will probably not be as good and the cpu usage can spike, so you will have to make a call on that one.